Announcements

Please check back here at least once each week to be sure you don't miss anything.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday break! All papers, scantrons, etc. are now waiting to be picked up outside my door. If there are any remaining by February, I will assume you do not want them and I will throw them out. Please come pick up your work as soon as possible.

All grades have now been posted in the gradebook and submitted to the Registrar. The grade you see in the far right Yellow column is the grade you should see in MyCampus for the course.

Participation Scores have now been posted in the gradebook. Remember, all the pink columns will change as Sub 4 grades are figured in.

The final exam is now graded and posted in the gradebook. No one failed, and one very hard-working student received a perfect score! The stats for both sections are as follows: Mean: 82.75%; Range: 64% to 100%. You'll recall that your individual gradebook lists stats for just your section at the bottom of the column. I have updated the Current Average formula to include your Final Exam score; once the Sub 4 grades and Participation scores are posted (by Weds the latest), you will see your final grade for the course.

A) First, it will consist of 50 multiple choice questions. You will have three hours but most likely will not need that long.

B) Second, the distribution of questions will be a bit less even. While all that we went over since the last exam will appear on the exam, it is primarily focused on one chapter. So, you will see questions on the articles by Carl Rogers and Philip Cushman, the video clips and Essay #6, as well as all lecture material. Still, the exam will be significantly weighted to reflect the material in chapter 12.

C) Finally, as we discussed, there will also be general questions related to semester-long topics such as the perspectives we studied, the methods psychologists use, critical thinking and so on.

I hope everyone has been able to form and use study groups. Good Studying and remember to take care of yourselves, get some rest and breathe!

You will notice that additional information has been added to the gradebook: your submission 4 is recorded as 1 for now (or zero if not submitted); extra credit has all been posted; and you can expect to see Participation grades posted by the end of this week. I intend to post final exam scores by 12/19.

Since I will not have most of your Sub 4s graded by the exam, please plan to pick your final papers up next term. They will be in a box outside my office. If you do not pick your paper up by mid-February, I will assume you do not want them and I will throw any unclaimed papers out. Similarly, if you are interested in seeing what you got wrong on the exam, you'll need to come by my office hours to review the questions with your scantron.

I hope some of you can still make that. We ARE still scheduled to have his class presentation at 4pm TODAY in Rm SC-147, despite the weather.

Brian Nolan had travel delays and will be unable to present as scheduled this AM. He will, at this moment, still be doing the 4pm talk. We are currently trying to re-schedule the Res. Talk for sometime tomorrow AM but that may not be possible. I will notify you as soon as I know more.

Thurs 10am Research Talk will be in Room SC-147 (this is for students who have a scheduling conflict with the afternoon talk but want to come) entitled "Neural Mechanism of Conditioned Excitation and Inhibition of the Eyeblink Response in Rats." We expect these will occur, barring a blizzard shutting down the entire school (that is, don't let a few flakes keep you away!).

Thurs 4 pm Teaching Lecture will be in Room SC-147 and is open to all students, entitled "Navigation and Spatial Learning."

Remember, to get the extra credit you MUST submit a brief summary of the talk you go to similar to what was asked of research studies, in this case:

1. What was the main research question (hypothesis) being studied or the main topic of the class presentation?

2. What primary methodologies were used (case study, observational study, survey, experiment)?

3. What area of psychology (e.g., developmental, cognitive, social) seems most relevant to this topic?

Grades for Submission 3 have now been entered in the gradebook and are incorporated into a "Current Average" so you can see generally where you stand in the class at this point. You can significantly impact your grade by doing well on the final and submitting a perfect Submission 4 (including title pages), since that is worth a full 40 points. In addition, you will see Participation grades posted during finals week. Please bring completed Extra Credit forms (with signatures and study summaries) to class on Friday 12/9 (these will not be accepted after class time).

As announced in class, Professor Brian Nolan will be here this week and his presentation will count for UP TO 1% extra credit (less if it would put you over the 3% maximum). The faculty welcome you to attend his "class" this Thursday, at 4pm in room SC-147. If you cannot make this time, he is also presenting his research on Thurs at 10am (this will probably be a bit harder to follow), but I don't know what room. If you want credit for attending, you must get my signature (or that of another Hanover professor if you don't see me) on your extra credit form.

Because the third submission is taking me longer than planned to grade, I have decided to extend your Submission 4 Deadline so that everyone will have at least a week to address my comments from Sub 3. I am still trying to get as many of your papers back to you tomorrow as I can, and of course you can work now to address the assigned critique without Sub 3. However, some of you will not get Sub 3 back until next Monday and you may want to revise the summary and evaluation portions so, I am extending the deadline for your final paper to the Monday of Finals week. Of course you may still choose to submit your final paper on Fri., 12/9 as currently scheduled. But everyone must have their paper in my office by 5pm on 12/12.

Please be aware that there are more research studies being posted on the bulletin board outside of room 147 this week, for those who want to participate for extra credit. In addition, you will have the opportunity to go to a Presentation given by a Job Candidate (Brian Nolan, Ph.D.) next week or during finals week. I will let you know as soon as that presentation is scheduled. You can receive up to 1 hour's worth of credit (1%) if you go. Just remember, the maximum extra credit you can receive for this course is 3%, so if you already have 2.5%, attending the presentation can only count for another 0.5% added to your final grade.

Just a reminder: the Cushman (1990) article is due for this class next week, 12/6. The links are on our home page or you can search EBSCO for the full text online. Please make a copy to bring to class next Tuesday.

The results of Exam III have now been posted. You will see pale yellow columns indicating the separate scores from the scantron and from the fill-ins. These are totaled and divided by 106 to obtain the percent you see as the grade for the exam in the bright yellow column.

Scores from both classes ranged from 57% to 98%. The overall average was 83.9%. I will return the exam on Monday after break.

Notice I have updated the column containing an estimate of your current average. It appears on the far right in light blue.

Exam III, as you know, will cover Ch. 9, 10, 11 and Essays 4 and 5. While there will be questions from all readings, I will mainly focus on the content of the chapters and their associated video clips, films and hand-outs (i.e., there are only a few questions from the essays). The Inner Life chapter appears a bit more than the others, given the detail it contains and the extra lecture time spent on this material. The exam consists of 40 multiple choice questions and 16 short answer questions (matching and fill-ins). You can expect to see your exam scores posted by the start of break (Weds., the latest).

You may view the answers to Handout #2 (on Defense Mechanisms) here (Word file). I encourage you to check this out before Friday in case you have questions about these. For those of you who wish to review for the exam, as always, bring your specific questions in, in writing. Otherwise, I expect you are making use of study groups, the writing center, and any other supports you need to maximize your performance on Exam III. As indicated earlier, I will include some short answer items in addition to the multiple choice.

Love Out Loud presents Bill Altermatt, of the psychology department, as part of their Queer Lecture Series. His talk is on Thursday at 7pm in Horner 102, and is entitled "The Psychology of Sexual Orientation."

Unfortunately, the CCP Panel on counseling and social work careers described below has been cancelled. It will be re-scheduled.

The Rogers' reading is due the Monday after break, 11/28, so I highly recommend you read it now and / or make yourself a copy to take home (which you can then bring back to class).

Hanover alumni working in Counseling or Social Work careers will be on campus to talk with students about how they chose their career; what activities, internships or classes helped them; what a typical day might entail or anything else students would like to discuss.

Just to clarify: the additional reading is not due until after the break, and our third exam is before break, so that reading will NOT be on Exam III. It will, however, be on the final, along with the Cushman article, due later in the term.

For any students planning to come by office hours, please be aware that this Weds only, I'll be leaving at 3:50pm.

Attention: anyone who missed the Quiet Rage video, it will NOT be available at the Reserve Desk from now till Monday (11/7) afternoon, because another professor needed it. Sorry for any inconvenience; do make sure you watch it.

Once again, the Submission #3 Deadline has been CHANGED to 11/14/05 - papers containing the revised summary and your evalution, along with their accompanying articles are due at the beginning of class.

The Final Exam has been scheduled for us: Thurs., 12/15 7pm - 10pm, in room SC-137. Both sections will take it together.

The psychology department is hosting a graduate school forum on Friday, November 4, from 11am-11:50am in Science Center 147. Whether you're a first-year student just beginning to think about psychology as a major or a senior psychology major getting ready to submit your applications, this is an excellent opportunity to learn more about graduate school in psychology-related fields. The session will be open-ended, with psychology faculty available to answer your questions. Please join us.

I would like to add to submission 3, due 11/9, the requirement that you re-submit the article hard copy. I had failed to write that in to the assignment.

Please be aware there is an article now at the Library's Reserve Desk which is due 11/29/05. We will be incorporating this reading into our discussion of chapter 12:

Rogers, C. R. (1947). Some observations on the organization of personality. American Psychologist, 2, 358-368.

For any students who missed either the Milgram film on Thursday or Zimbardo's today, those films will be kept at the Library's Reserve desk for the next week or two so you can view them. These will be on the exam, so you are responsible both for their content and the class discussions regarding them.

Also, many of you are noticing I have not been able to post grades for Sub 2s in a while - I have had technical problems with Vault which have put me behind schedule. As soon as I can grade your papers I will. Meantime, you can be working up your Submission 3 and then incorporate my comments when you get them back later this week. Sorry for the delay.

Mid-term grades have now been reported to the registrar for first year students and other "Must Report" students. The average listed in the gradebook was used. If you do not see your average as of today, then no mid-term report was made for you.

The results of Exam II have now been posted, please check your gradebook for your grade. Scores from both classes ranged from 48% to 96%. The overall average was 80.7%. I will not be returning the exam until the week of 10/31 due to make-ups. You will notice over the coming week that I will be adding grades for Submission 2, as well as a column containing an estimate of your current average. This is the information used to report mid-term grades.

In case it is helpful to planning your schedules for next Spring, I thought I would let you know about the course I will be teaching. It counts as an elective for Psychology Majors. Tell your friends....

This course explores how experiences of suffering can derail, alter or strengthen the process of human development. We will explore issues such as early parental absence, childhood maltreatment and deprivation due to such events as war and disaster. Both psychological and literary works will be used to examine how specific developmental challenges impact identity formation.

Exam II is complete and will consist of 46 multiple choice questions from Ch. 5, 6, 7 (roughly 11 each) and Essays 2 and 3 (roughly 5 each). I will have these graded and posted this weekend, just in time to include the results in mid-term reports.

For anyone who did not hear it from your advisors or see it on the web, I thought you might be interested in the CCP (and free pizza) tonight:

For those interested in participating in research for extra credit: there are study sheets posted on the bulletin board now outside of SC-147. If you cannot make the study times (tonight and tomorrow) the same researchers will post more sheets after break. Remember to print the forms, get them signed, and save them to re-use later in the term, then submit all paperwork to me on the last day of class.

Because the issue of hitting children in order to induce moral (compliant) behavior came up in both classes today, I thought I'd give you a link which can help you think through the issues further. Some of you might find this helpful when making sense of your articles. While I do want to be careful to acknowledge my own clinically-informed views on this issue, those views are in line with decades of research. Ultimately each of you needs to review the research and decide for yourselves whether the benefits of immediate compliance outweigh the potential costs in terms of healthy development.

This 2002 report describes a meta-analysis which examined 60+ years of research. While it does represent differing views, most child development specialists, educators and mental health professionals come down on the side that it is better to refrain from using a behavior which is statistically likely to create problems, than let it continue until we have absolute proof of its effects.

Attention, Section A - I caught a few errors on my end so if you saw your grade this morning, go check it again in case something changed. I have now completed section B's scoring, as well. Check the gradebook for your grade, then go to MyCampus Forum for my replies. Most of the time I only replied to students who had significant points taken off, but sometimes I replied with a minor detail which you need to know, but might not be on the list below. Also, for those of you who had articles from a journal not published by APA, you can double-check the new articles you are now researching by going to the APA's list of their journals at the following page:

If a journal is not on this list, it is not published by the American Psychological Assn. Contact me if you have questions!

I am in the process of scoring your Submission 1 posts to the Forum. Section A is done, section B will be done 10/5. Many of you lost points for not having chosen APA published journals. What happened? Just being in the PSYCHINFO database does not guarantee the publisher - which must be the "American Psychological Assn." Type that into the publisher field in the Advanced Search to limit your search. Ask a librarian if you are still confused by this.

For each of you who lost significant points, I wrote back a note indicating who published your article's journal or identifying some other major problem. In most cases, if wrote a reply to you, then you need to go back to the database and choose another article, this time from an APA published journal, BY NEXT MONDAY, 10/10. Otherwise, you will have a hard time keeping up with the rest of the submissions. Either way, the grade you see in the gradebook on the Final Project sheet is the grade you get for Submission #1. E-mail me your new citation as soon as possible so I know whether you are back on track.

On another note, many of you lost points for APA formatting problems. I have added a Thread called "SUB 1 GRADING " with the following info, but I'll repeat here to make sure you all see it:

Submissions were graded on a 10-point scale according to the assignment hand-out, as follows:
was it on time? (if not, you get a zero)
was the article from an APA Published journal?
was the citation in APA format?

Most people lost points on the last item. Here are the types of mistakes which led to a point or two being taken off (depending on the extent of formatting errors). Please be sure to use correct format in future (e.g., in your Reference list for the final paper).

1. Authors are listed alphabetically by last name with first initial; separated by commas and an ampersand (&) before the last author. You must list all authors, do not use "et al" in the citation, you only use that in the text. Also, do not change the order of the authors - list them in the same order they are given at the top of your article.

2. Journal titles are italicized (or underlined, I accepted either). Some of you cut and pasted from Word but the formatting didn't hold. I did not take off points just for this, but make sure you fix it for the References page of your future submissions.

3. Journal volume # gets italicized and put in parentheses, followed by the issue number which is not in parentheses. Do not write Vol nor Num nor #.

4. The article's actual page numbers come at the end, do not omit them.

5. Year of publication goes in () after authors. Do not list the month and year again later in the citation. Remember the period after the year: "(1990). "

Please see the gradebook for your Submission #1 grade. By the way, a number of you did not label your posts correctly (subject line) which made it difficult for me to track the authors. In future, please follow directions precisely.

I have decided that Question 16 on Exam I was worded poorly enough to warrant a VERY RARE grade correction for one answer choice. Those of you who are affected by this should see your score increased by one point in the gradebook. If your grade remains unchanged it is because you put one of the other choices which were clearly incorrect.

In addition, I had a calculation error when figuring the mean, so the updated stats for this exam are now: Range: 37% to 97% and Mean = 79.5% for the two classes combined (see your gradebook for the average of just your section).

To students in Section B - if you got Item 16 wrong on Exam I, bring your scantron back to class on Monday. This is not a promise of a grade change, I just need to see your scantron forms. If you got 16 correct, disregard this.

The results of Exam I have now been posted. There was a lot of variability on this exam; scores ranged from 36% to 96%. The overall average was 79.02%, which corresponds to a C+. Many of you did a nice job of applying the material you learned. For those of you who are having difficulty, remember you may come see me at any time during office hours to discuss how you might improve.

For those interested, I use the following grade conversion scale for converting your final course average to a letter grade.

Grade	Percentage Equivalent
A	93.0-100.0
A-	90.0- 92.9
B+	87.1- 89.9
B	83.0- 87.0
B-	80.0- 82.9
C+	77.1- 79.9
C	73.0- 77.0
C-	70.0- 72.9
D+	67.1- 69.9
D	63.0- 67.0
D-	60.0- 62.9
F	Below 60

A quick check of MyCampus reveals that many of you have not posted your first submission yet. For those of you early birds who did, I have reviewed them and in some cases replied back with very minor changes to make. You can see my reply by hitting the little magnifier icon to the left of your post. I suggest everyone review each other's postings, not only to make sure no one has used your article already, but to see my comments back to people. Again, you should be using Hacker, the library link or the APA Publication Manual to check how exactly to write up your citation. It is important to be precise: use first initials, not full first names; etc. etc.

Once again, please remember pencils for the exam. As mentioned in class, if you are interested in learning more about biological perspectives, as you review for the exam, there are 5 lectures on the web by a very interesting philosopher/neuropsychologist:

Exam I is this coming Tuesday. You should be forming study groups if you have not already done so. Please bring specific questions you have from Chapters 1-4 to class in writing on Monday.

For those of you who have missed any classes in which I showed videos from "The Brain" (the PBS series), or for anyone who wants to review those videos to study for the Exam this Tuesday: I will be putting the DVDs on Reserve at the library later today. As of tonight, you will be able to borrow them to watch in the library. They were (in order of presentation):

I have also added a link to the webpage which is optional, but very interesting; it also has some good review of many brain-related terms and concepts which we have been studying. The link takes you to a series of lectures from 2003 given on the BBC by V. Ramachandran, MD. He is both a neuroscientist and a philosopher and has lots of interesting insights into connections between the Brain and the Mind. You can read the lecture text and/or listen to the lectures via audio files.

In case you missed it, the assignment in chapter four has been changed. You may omit pages 147-155.

Thanks to whoever returned our attendance sheet. Please remember that this Wednesday we will meet in the library instead of our classroom, at our regular class time. Please check the Intro course page, I have now attached a Word document explaining the Final Project. I will distribute copies in class, please read these before Wednesday so you know what we are doing in the library. If changes need to be made to this project, I will update the online document, rather than give out new copies.

Whoever walked off with the attendance sheet in Section A today: please leave it in the envelope by my door (SC-255) as soon as possible. Thanks.

You may notice an error on your printed syllabus, it has now been corrected, please feel free to download another copy. There was a mistake related to the scheduling grid around Thanksgiving Break. It should read as follows:

Exam III

Chapters 9, 10, 11

Class will not meet

FINAL EXAM

Exam III

Chapters 9, 10, 11